Yam Stir Cooked (Ji Agworawgo)

New yam is in season and this is the time of year Ji Agworagwo is eaten in abundance.

You make a slight adjustment in a cooking method and you get a different result. This is the case with this today’s recipe. On my way home from church last weekend I bought some Efuru yam. A yam dish was on my mind but not yam pottage and so I ended up making something similar to Ji Agworagwo.

By the way there is no English culinary equivalent for the term Agworagwo. The term simply means stirring all ingredients together but off the fire. Ji Agworagwo is a simple dish where the yam is washed unpeeled, boiled in the skin till soft, peeled and the palm oil cray fish, salt and shredded Utazi or Ncahwun is added to the hot yam and stirred and eaten.

My twist to Ji agworagwo is the use of Ugu and the little extra cooking time. Because I was using Ugu I still left the pot on the fire for just 2 minutes. If using Utazi or Nchawun no need to stir the dish over the fire everything is done off the fire.

Heaps of new yam is what you see everywhere in open markets in Nigeria. One would have thought that the price of yam will drop with this abundance but not so. I tend to stick to certain variety when new yam is out, like Onitsha yam, Efuru yam in in Lagos and Abuja yam much later when we get into the ember months.

You buy some variety of yams which the sellers had sworn by and what you get is a bitter piece of carbohydrate that soaks up water so much that you cannot enjoy that slight hardness you get in the middle of yam. To make tasty Yam dishes you need to select yams carefully at this time of year. Does someone have a tip on how to identify yam that will be tasty?

Here is my slightly senior level Ji Agworagwo. Enjoy!

 

Recipe to Cook Ji Agworagwo

Ingredients

4-8 pieces Yam

½ cup pieces Smoked fish

8- 12 pieces Smoked Prawns

1 table spoon Cray fish

¼ chopped Onion

Chili or Scotch Bonnet Pepper to taste

Palm oil

Seasoning to taste

Salt to taste

 

Method

1. Cut up yam with skin, wash and boil the yam till soft. Peel skin off the yam and add to the fish/shrimp pot
2. When yam is cooking, use another pot to steam the fish,dry prawns, crayfish ,onion and pepper with very little water and steam till dry. This is to get the fish and prawn to be soft.
3. When the yam is cooked, peel and add to the smoked fish and prawn, add the oil and ugu and stir for 1-2 minutes to allow the ugu cook a bit. There is hardly the type of sauce you see in yam pottage and other Yam recipes. This is just the yam and vegetable.
4. Serve hot!